Sleep - a portal to another Universe?

It's the time of year to obsess about sleep - to get your sleep right; to maximise its effectiveness as the free-of-charge wonder drug that boosts your immune system while rejuvenating you. 

The cusp of wakefulness and sleep, as you slip away, is fascinating - I try to stay conscious so as I can be aware of those odd, almost dream-like thoughts - indeed precursors to dreams - and attempt to parse them... and then nod off as I try.

I am blessed with sound sleep. Typically eight and a quarter hours, waking once or twice in between (depending on evening fluid intake). Optimal sleep (as I wrote here) is bed by 22:00, zonk out, wake at 02:00 after four hours of sleep, 15 minutes interval, then another four hours of sleep and I wake naturally at 06:15. That's how it was last night. 

The pause at the halfway stage is a remnant of pre-industrial times, when our sleep (especially in northern latitudes in winter) would be punctuated by a break of up to two hours, assuming our ancestors went to bed shortly after sunset and rose just before sunrise.

While in the process of dropping off, feeling consciousness slipping away is to be savoured, for it is very much an altered state. One's train of thought is shunted onto a mysterious track and if you find yourself here consciously, and examine it, running it back, you may find it makes no sense at all. Often this would be an examination of the day; I'd find myself worrying about some work not done, or some minor problem... then considering it, I'd discover that it didn't exist at all. 

This is something that intrigues me; this is a phenomenon that sits within the brain/mind problem, on the cusp of the world of classical cause-and-effect physics and quantum mechanics - if Penrose and Hameroff are on the right track by postulating that consciousness is quantum in nature.

Our dreams - what are they really? Are they no more than a subconscious audit of the day's thoughts, concerns and emotions? Or is something stranger going on? Non-local consciousness at play?

I woke at 2am, emptied my bladder, returned to bed - and attempted to connect my consciousness into that of the Universe. The first word that swims unbidden into my consciousness is: 'CONFIRM'. After a while, the second one appears 'SEFTON'. A little later, 'LALE STREET'.  Note - these are not auditory hallucinations; they pop up telepathically, but clearly, unambiguously. I wake at 06:15 and check Google Maps. I find that Sefton, as a place name, appears in the UK (in Merseyside), in New South Wales, New Zealand and Illinois. None has a Lale Street. I check Lale Street. There's but one - on Honolulu. My nocturnal hope of waking to find it and to ascribe significance, just as I did that night in June 2004 when I woke to find the exact wooden hotel, the Zig Zag Inn, in Zig Zag, Oregon. Or the night two years ago when I woke to find the location of my dream of Biarritz.

But in an alternate Universe? Could there be a Lale Street in a place called Sefton but in another dimension? In an alternate timeline? On a parallel plane? Proponents of a multiverse consisting of an infinite number of alternate universes must accept that in one of them there is. The one difference between Sefton and Zig Zag and Biarritz is that the latter two were dreams, while Sefton was only a word that popped into waking consciousness during a brief period between sleep.

On a sleep-related note, I have long been fascinated by the linguistic gaps and overlaps that exist between English and Polish. The following occurred to me yesterday - that the notions of sleeping, dreaming, falling asleep, being asleep - and sleep itself - align themselves differently in the two languages. Sleeping and dreaming seem quite interchangeable in Polish; the notions of dreaming during sleep and dreaming of something while awake (śnić and marzyć respectively) are indistinct in English.

English	part of speech	Polish
dream	noun	marzenie
dream	noun	sen
sleep	noun	sen
sleepy	adjective	senn-y/-a/-e
asleep	adverb	we śnie
to sleep	verb	spać
to fall sleep	verb	zasnąć
to dream	verb	śnić
to dream	verb	marzyć

This time two years ago:
A month and much progress at Chynów station

This time three years ago:
Tram tips for visiting Edinburgh

This time four years ago:
Warsaw to Edinburgh made easier

This time six years ago:
Stuffocation: the rich-world problem of dealing with too many things

This time nine years ago:
Heroes on the wall (for my father)

This time 11 years ago:
Tax dodge or public service?

This time 12 years ago:
Warsaw's woodlands in autumn

This time 13 years ago:
Still here, the early snow

This time 14 years ago:
Another point of view